Calls for Boeung Kak Activist’s Release Renewed on One-Year Anniversary

Cambodian and international rights groups have renewed their calls for the release of Phnom Penh housing rights campaigner campaigner Yorm Bopha one year after her arrest, urging the public and national leaders not to forget her during the country’s current political deadlock. Global watchdog Amnesty International said in a statement that Yorm Bopha should be released “immediately and unconditionally” and that he soon-to-be-formed government in Cambodia, which is still reeling from contested July 28 elections, should ensure other rights campaigners are not imprisoned in the future. Yorm Bopha, a longtime activist for members of Phnom Penh’s Boeung Kak Lake community displaced to make way for a real estate development, has been held since Sept. 4 last year when she was arrested in connection with a skirmish that broke out near her home. … “She is just one of many human rights defenders who have been harassed, threatened, attacked, and locked up over the past years,” Amnesty International’s deputy Asia Pacific director Isabelle Arradon said. “The new government, once formed, must halt this disturbing trend as a matter of urgency, and ensure there is space in Cambodia for peaceful activists to conduct their important and legitimate work.” … Twenty-five local civil society organizations issued a joint statement Tuesday calling on the Supreme Court to hear Yorm Bohpa’s pending appeal “without delay” and overturn her conviction. … “The continued imprisonment of Yorm Bopha despite the sheer lack of evidence against her just goes to show that she was never afforded her right to remain innocent before proven guilty and that this was a political case in which the verdict was pre-determined,” CCHR president Ou Virak said in a statement Tuesday.

 Radio Free Asia
http://www.rfa.org/english/news/cambodia/yorm-bopha-09032013201419.html